Ruby Flynn (5 page)

‘I don’t know, I just want us to stay together,’ Lottie whispered, taking hold of Ruby’s hand. She felt responsible for her, even though Ruby now ruled the roost. Lottie knew that she needed to be protected, if only from herself.

The door opened and Sister Francis called Ruby into the office first.

‘Look at the cut of you, Ruby,’ she hissed, as she guided her across the plush carpet towards the desk where the reverend mother sat. ‘Set your face nicely.’

Ruby’s eyes narrowed and she glared up at her mentor. Unperturbed, Sister Francis smiled. Ruby reluctantly smiled back.

As Ruby approached the desk, she saw a man and a woman, sitting on one side of the reverend mother.

‘Ruby, this is Mr and Mrs McKinnon, they are Scottish.’

Ruby had never before met anyone who wasn’t from Ireland.

‘They work at Ballyford Castle and are looking for a well-educated girl to join the servants who live and work there.’

Reverend Mother continued. ‘Ruby has been with us since she was twelve years old and is now almost eighteen. Along with all of the charity girls at the convent, she has been fully trained in housekeeping and laundry duties. She is also well above the capabilities required to pass the leaving certificate and has even begun training in secretarial and bookkeeping work. We continually develop and stretch our girls so they will be useful employees in the very best places when they leave here. We have a reputation to uphold, Mr McKinnon, and you will not be disappointed in Ruby here, I can vouch for that myself.’ Begrudgingly she added, ‘She is also a very hard worker.’

The man and woman both looked Ruby up and down. The intensity of their scrutiny made her feel very uncomfortable.

‘Where do you come from, girl?’ asked the man. His accent sounded strange to Ruby, but much softer than she had thought it would be. She expected a man with such a rugged and wide-set face to speak in a fierce, booming voice. Instead, his was as gentle and as soft as summer rain and she found herself wanting to return the smile he gave her when he finished speaking.

Sister Francis had given the girls very clear instructions that morning. ‘Don’t speak if you are spoken to, girls. The reverend mother answers all the questions for you. The best way to be placed is not to speak at all.’

‘I’m from Doohoma, I am.’ Ruby did exactly what she had been told not to do. She lifted her head high and looked the man straight in the eye. Her voice was as strong as his had been gentle.

The reverend mother glared at Ruby.

‘Doohoma, eh? Your family fished, did they?’

Now, Ruby did do as she had been told. She hadn’t expected to be asked a question about her family. She felt caught off guard and fell silent.

A look of smug satisfaction came over the reverend mother’s face. ‘Indeed, Mr McKinnon, but since Ruby has been with us she has trained assiduously for the day when she can be usefully employed. It would be a surprise to me if her family were from the fishing community. When Ruby arrived here, she could read very well indeed and her education was already at an advanced level. Not only can she read, she writes beautifully, without error, and can compose a perfect essay. She is learned as well as able and, when she bothers, she can speak prettily too. Sadly, we have little information about her past, being a storm orphan.’

‘Come here, girl.’ It was the turn of the woman to speak. Her voice was also kindly as she beckoned at Ruby to move forward. She wore a small black hat pinned to her once black hair, now shot through with grey. A tiny veil peeped out from the back of the hat. Her face was pale, long and narrow and her eyes so dark brown, they looked almost black.

Ruby turned to the reverend mother for approval and then crossed the room to stand in front of Mrs McKinnon.

‘Hello, hen,’ Mrs McKinnon said, then she reached out and took hold of Ruby’s chin, lifting her face up to the light streaming in from the window.

‘See those eyes?’ She turned back and spoke to her husband.

Ruby’s green eyes flashed back at them both.

‘I do and I would say she would fit in very nicely.’ Mr McKinnon grinned back at his wife.

Ruby realized that they were speaking in some form of code. As though they shared a secret and she was part of it.

As if she had read Ruby’s thoughts, Mrs McKinnon spoke again. ‘We are looking for someone who can read and write well. We will take her.’

The reverend mother almost fainted with relief.

Leaving the convent was traumatic. The girls had been woken, fed, ordered into clean clothes, sold and were out of the door. It was all as quick as that. At the root of Ruby’s anxiety was her concern for Lottie. Sweet, kind Lottie, who had always looked after her, even if their roles had sometimes been reversed. They were all each other had in the world.

‘There is no use complaining, Ruby, we’re only girls, we have no rights.’

Ruby saw red when Lottie said such things. ‘Come on, Lottie. Is there no fight in you? Do you think I mean to be a prisoner all of my life? Not on your nelly. Wherever we are sent, we must plan to run away and whoever does it first, must promise to find the other.’

‘We will, we’ll never lose touch and when we are married, we’ll live next door to each other,’ said Lottie, excited.

‘Aye, and our husbands will be fishermen,’ said Ruby, ‘and when they fish, we’ll make the food and keep the house clean and we’ll do it quick so that we can walk on the cliffs and talk to each other all day long while we wait for them to come back.’

Lottie laughed. ‘We could even get married on the same day.’

Now it was Ruby’s turn to laugh. ‘We will, but first we have to escape from all this and I promise you we will, Lottie. It won’t last forever, Sister Francis told me. It won’t last forever.’

Lottie was placed in a hotel in Belmullet to work as a housekeeper. Poor Maria was taken to work as a laundry maid at a boarding house in Crossmolina and looked far from happy.

‘I can’t steal fucking sheets, can I?’ she said to Lottie, as they dressed to leave. ‘I’m just one up from the fecking poorhouse. How am I to make my way out of this backward country? I want to be in Liverpool and then earn the money for a passage to America, not here. Here it’s just shite and sheets. The bitches have done for me, so they have.’

‘We will find you, Maria,’ said Ruby, ‘don’t give out. We will find you. Just keep your head down.’

Ruby meant it and Maria knew she would one day see Ruby again. The two girls embraced. ‘May God be good to you, Ruby,’ she whispered as she hugged her tight.

Ruby’s goodbye was characteristically eventful. The reverend mother watched on while Ruby and Lottie said their farewells to Sister Francis, who whispered, ‘Be nice,’ in Ruby’s ear.

But even Sister Francis was shocked by what the reverend mother said next.

‘Well, Ruby, I cannot say I’m not glad to see the back of you.’

The girls were lined up by the door, ready to depart, bags packed and at their feet.

Ruby felt her stomach lurch and her skin began to prickle. The familiar feelings of hurt and rejection crept in, taking her by surprise. She had expected more; quite what, she was not sure, but not this harshness. She breathed in deeply. Her temper very rarely got the better of her nowadays.

‘Do you think the reverend mother might be sad to see me go?’ Ruby had asked Lottie. Part of her secretly hoped that maybe she would. That she would say a few nice words and allow Ruby to leave on the same terms as everyone else.

‘I think she will,’ said Lottie. ‘She’s grown used to you and although you didn’t get along so well in the beginning, I think she will be nice today. This is your last hour. But even if she isn’t, don’t lose your rag and give her the benefit of your temper, be good.’ Lottie had crossed her fingers behind her back and secretly willed the reverend mother to be nice to Ruby, on this her last day.

Lottie’s words rang in Ruby’s ears as the reverend mother began to speak.

‘I shall now have to write to Con O’Malley, the town clerk from Doohoma and give him your new address and the name of your employer.’

Ruby’s eyes flashed with anger.

‘The town clerk in Doohoma? The man who brought me here? Why would you be writing to him? Why would you
want
to write to him?’

She didn’t miss a beat or skip a breath while she stared at the reverend mother, willing her to reply.

‘He writes once a month, enquiring after your progress. I don’t have to tell you that my replies have not always been the most favourable. Before I had given up on you entirely, the foolish man suggested that you should live with him and his wife. Once their baby was born and things had settled down, they came to visit me with the little boy and said they would like to take you back to their home. I told him that was not a good idea at all and that no child would be safe around someone with a temper as violent as yours. I told him, if he wished, he could see the bruises on Deirdra McGinty. I said the poor child was half dead with the beating you gave her. His wife thanked me, for saving her from making what could have been a terrible mistake.’

Ruby felt rage rising up like vomit in her throat.

Lottie reached out to grab her hand behind her back and squeezed it tight. ‘Don’t give out,’ she whispered. Ruby bit her lip, hard.

As Ruby and Lottie hugged each other goodbye Ruby finally let it out in an ill-tempered tone, ‘The only reason I didn’t run at the old witch and rip the eyes out of her head was because I have to get out of here now. But I know, if I ever see her again, there will be nothing to stop me.’

‘Go now,’ said Sister Francis pushing her out of the door and down the drive. Sister Francis was shocked by what she had heard and her own tranquillity deserted her as she too began to cry.

Ruby threw her arms around the nun’s neck and kissed her cheek.

‘You were good to me, always,’ she whispered before she turned her back on them all and ran down the drive to the waiting cart, carrying with her the small embroidered bag, given to her by Sister Francis, with two changes of underclothes and a dress for church on Sundays.

Then she stopped, picked up a clod of wet earth from Reverend Mother’s precious flower border and hurled it at her screaming, ‘I will come back and get you one day, so help me God, I will.’ With that, she stepped up onto the cart with her heart pounding and no backward glance.

She knew that Sister Francis and Lottie would be waving until the cart was out of sight but she couldn’t bear to see the tears of the only two people in the world she loved.

*

Mr and Mrs McKinnon had sent Jack, the man of all trades, with the horse and cart to collect Ruby. Jack was as tall as his cart was long. A man of few social graces, he was never without his scruffy black hat and had trouble using a blade to shave. His ragged-bottomed trousers were tied up with old rope for a belt. Yet despite his general shabbiness Jack was a happy man. What he lacked in refinement he compensated for with good humour and his willowy tallness belied his gentle nature.

Today, the cart was loaded with deliveries for the castle and Ruby had so far spent the journey perched precariously on a sack of flour with a huge oilskin to keep her dry from the rain, which had begun to fall with conviction just as they set off from the convent. But they had only been gone for half an hour and weren’t far along the road before the sun came out, shining through the leaves and dappling the road in shimmers of gold.

‘The day will be shining warm by the time we reach the castle,’ Jack said, breaking the silence. ‘Amy Keenan, she makes the sun shine wherever she is and that’s the truth.’ By the nut-brown colour of his face, Ruby guessed that he spent a lot of time outdoors with his horse and cart. Although Jack was not directly employed at Ballyford he did much of the fetching and carrying and was regarded as one of the staff, having been at the castle since he was just a lad.

Jack told Ruby that Mrs McKinnon, the housekeeper, was from Edinburgh originally and that she was just a dote.

‘The McKinnons, now some say they have been at the castle forever, as long as the FitzDeanes. My father, he said that’s not true and that his grandfather remembered the first McKinnon who came after the famine and never left. They were bad days they were. The McKinnons, they come from a family of land agents in Scotland and there has been a McKinnon at Ballyford ever since that time.’

Ruby knew about the famine, they had been taught the gory details at the convent and about how it was all the fault of the English.

Jack never stopped chattering and Ruby’s head was soon so filled with the names of everyone who lived in the castle, what they did, which family they were from, that she thought her head would burst.

‘Have you ever been to a castle before?’

Ruby laughed out loud. ‘No, why would I? My mother used to tell me stories of castles though and about witches and dragons rescuing a beautiful princess.’

Jack nodded his head thoughtfully. ‘Where was yer mammy from then? Who were her people?’

Ruby fell quiet. It wasn’t the first time today she had realized that she knew very little about her mother’s background. She still carried her mother’s words in her heart.
You have family Ruby, find them
.
But she didn’t know where to begin.

‘You fair lost your temper back there,’ said Jack looking down at her with a frown. ‘I’m guessing there must have been good reason for ye to risk being punished for what ye shouted to the reverend mother now?’

Ruby looked sheepish. She fixed her stare on the horse’s rump and remained silent.

‘Ye don’t have to tell me if ye don’t want, but ye may feel better to get it off yer chest before ye start at the castle. Can’t have things brewing on yer first day and I won’t say nuthin, I promise ye that.’

‘I feel stupid now,’ Ruby replied. ‘You really won’t tell them at the castle, will you?’

Jack smiled. ‘Me? Well, here’s a strange thing about Jack, he forgets most things that aren’t important and that was not important to anyone, anywhere. ’Tis a new day and a new start for you, Ruby Flynn, just don’t go trying those antics on Amy or Mrs McKinnon, if you want to stay alive.’